In a post on its Google+ page, the Loon team explained that when they started a pilot test in 2013, they thought they’d need a continuous stream of balloons around the world such that, as one balloon drifted away, another would be ready to take its place. Their main task would be to manage the balloons’ paths during their round-the-world journeys just enough to get them to drift over their internet test locations in roughly equal intervals—so as one balloon moved out of range, another would move in its place.“We kept repeating the experiments and saw the same results: Rather than send streams of balloons around the world, we had figured out how to cluster balloons in teams over a particular region,” the team wrote. “Now that we can send small teams of balloons directly to areas that need connectivity, and get those balloons to spend more of their time in those areas, we believe we`re years closer to our goal of bringing internet connectivity to unserved areas.﻿”“Although our navigation algorithms can get even better, and we need to test them in many other parts of the world, this is a positive sign for Loon’s economic and operational viability,” Teller wrote in a blog post. “We’ll be able to put together a Loon network over a particular region in weeks not months, and it would be a lot less work to launch and manage. We’ll reduce the number of balloons we need and get greater value out of each one. The company has done deals in the past with the likes of Vodafone, Telefonica and Telstra, and while the way in which service will be delivered has changed, the goal of Project Loon has remained the same over the years: Beam internet service from balloons floating in the stratosphere down to the 4 billion or so people who don`t currently have a good connection. broadband internet, Public Wi-Fi Networks, project loon, Google, Alphabet, facebook, 3g broadband, vodafone, telefonica, telstra -- 続き・本文を読む